UK decision to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda undermines the practice of asylum: UNHCR official

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United Kingdom’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda undermines the practice of asylum globally, the high commissioner for the United Nations Refugee Agency said on Saturday.

“The UK will send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, where their claims will be processed, shifting its responsibilities to another country and undermining the practice of asylum globally,” the Commissioner Flippo Grandi said in a tweet. 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the Rwanda plan on Thursday to potentially send tens of thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda for their asylum applications to be processed for which the UK is planning to pay an initial sum of $157 million. On the day the plan was announced 562 people crossed the English Channel in 14 small boats. The day before the plan was announced 600 people crossed the Channel, raising the number this year to 6000 people. A total of 28,395 made the journey in 2021 compared to 8,417 in 2020.

“UNHCR remains firmly opposed to arrangements that seek to transfer refugees and asylum seekers to third countries in the absence of sufficient safeguards and standards. Such arrangements simply shift asylum responsibilities, evade international obligations, and are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention,” said UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs on Thursday. 

“People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy. They should not be traded like commodities and transferred abroad for processing,” she added.

UNHCR has called on the UK and Rwanda to “re-think the plans.”

Thousands of people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region left the country in 2021 for Europe. Young people have spoken of leaving the country in search of jobs and opportunities they feel they cannot access at home where unemployment is high and political tensions, corruption and instability leave them with little hope for their future.

A boat carrying 33 migrants from different countries, including Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, capsized in the English Channel on November 24. One of the survivors told Rudaw English at the time that the incident took place in British territorial waters. 

Speaking to Italian RAI TV, Pope Francis has hinted that racism was behind the fact that many countries warmly welcomed migrants from Ukraine in recent months while people from other parts of the world received less welcome. 

"The refugees are divided. First class, second class, by skin colour, whether you come from a developed country or a non-developed one,” said the pontiff, adding that "We are racists. And that's bad.”

Nearly five million Ukrainians have left their country since Russia invaded the country on February 24, according to the UN figures.